Welcome to the new ACCESS newsletter and blog

Members of the ACCESS Coalition at the Africa-EU Energy Partnership meeting in Milan

By Hannah Mottram, ACCESS Coordinator

The Alliance of Civil Society Organisations for Clean Energy Access (the ACCESS Coalition) will be using this newsletter and blog to share news, information and opportunities with all those interested in our work. This post is to let you know how we’re going to be doing this, as well as a quick update from the ACCESS coordinator.

We’ve also launched a website access-coalition.org where you can find out more about our work and members. On our Twitter account @ACCESSCSOs we’ll be sharing news and publications on energy access and civil society. We’ll mostly be using #energyaccess and will be keeping an eye on this hashtag for things to share.

This post is from Hannah, the ACCESS coordinator. Most of our blogs will be from our members, and I will be supporting our national level members to share their views and experiences. We’d also like to share information from outside the network, so contact me if you’ve got something you think would be interesting to our members and supporters.

ACCESS has had a lot of successes at the international level, from having our principles for multistakeholder engagement taken on board by SEforAll, to contributing to the UN report on Sustainable Development Goal 7. Whilst we’ll continue to engage at an international level, we’re now focusing our work on supporting members at a regional and national level. With countries implementing SEforAll, SDG7 and the Paris agreement, it’s a key time for the voices of civil society to be heard.

One way we’re doing this is by sharing information across the network. Some of this will be published on our website on our resources page. Tools, case studies, best practice. We were able to bring together ACCESS members from across Africa at a meeting of the Africa – EU Energy Partnership. We shared best practice and experiences from across the continent and agreed to set up a working group to focus on our regional activities.

Our members already work on and support national level advocacy. We’re looking at how we can collaborate better – next year we’ll be bringing together ACCESS members and wider civil society at a meeting in Zambia, working with the Africa-EU Energy Partnership. This won’t just be organisations that work on energy – for good progress we need to include wider organisations who work on health, agriculture, education and livelihoods.

On our website we’ve uploaded some of the key resources created by members. You can find out more about the work of the coalition through our blogs, FAQs or through our members. If you’ve got any ideas or questions, get in touch with the ACCESS coordinator using the box below.

Published by accesscoalition

One thought on “Welcome to the new ACCESS newsletter and blog”

Access is doing well in bringing together members in addressing issues of safe and clean energy and for Tanzania taking SE4ALL as an implementing tool , among others to bring Gender equality and inclusiveness.